Not a bad week for Japan readers this week:
On Tokyo Mango I found a nice summary about Riyo Mori, who won the Miss Universe contest in Mexico this week. Also, Lisa discusses a cool new keitai app which allows a user to email in a mobile picture of themselves, and receive a couple of images of celebrities the app thinks share your facial features.
Catching up with Japundit, there is a great companion piece to the Riyu Mori victory coverage, which is about the revolution in the Japanese approach to beauty pagents, the strategy that has vaulted the contestants into the final rounds, and resulted in this years top prize. Behind it all is a French women, Ines Ligron, who is changing everything about the way the Japanese compete on the world stage.
Speaking of victory, I learned that “The Mourning Forest (Mogari no Mori)” was awarded the Grand Prize at the this year’s Cannes Film Festival. As well as reviewed a couple of interesting Japanese cultural items posted in May: an illustrated article on the Love Hotel, and a mini-article about a concert in Japan in which the audience lay on luxury beds and was served Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Also, of particular interest to me was a think piece about the sinking levels of Japanese women’s prerequisites for finding their man.
Quick includes: On Pink Tentacle, a cool set of images of some excellent, customized vans. Trends in Japan has an in-depth look into the new beer-like beverage for kids. And finally, to round out your weekend reading, an excellent review of the history of Bathing Ape in Clast’s article “The Changing Brand Value of Bape.
All in all, a really great week to be surfing the blogs.
Tags: Japan
